Trying a completely new design on our .co.uk should I have it on a different IP to my .com

[PottyScotty]

We have just relaunched http://www.gobananas.co.uk/ and made the site much smaller than .com and dissallowed robots on 98% of the site.  The goal with this site is to get users to use the search facility rather than go through our menus like we have on .com

Should I host the UK site on a different IP number to the .com?Thanks

[Highland]

You can but you don't have to. There is a small benefit to having a ccTLD on an IP that has a reverse DNS to that country. The main reason to have a different IP, however, is different demographics. If your .com is aimed at the US market then it needs to be hosted in the US because it lowers latency. Same with your UK market, your Austrailian market, etc. Lower latency is better. That doesn't mean you HAVE to do it. You can host all of it in the US and still rank well. It just doesn't have those extra signals so it's a bit more work, but not greatly more-so than setting up these different IPs.